[gothic-l] the word "the" as in "the house" or "the car"

[Егоров Владимир]

********************
Hi Peter!

Gothic had definite articles, i.e. analogues to English <the>,
but, leaving this item to more competent members of the Gothic-L,
I'd like to note that Spanish <el> is NOT an Arabic word.
Otherwise we should accept Italian <il> and French <le> also
as loan words from Arabic, which seems unbelievable.
More probable (and widely accepted) is derivation
of the definite articles in all Romance languages from Latin
<illus, illum, illa> 'this, that' for various genders.
Thus origination of the Romance article is the same as for
Germanic one (cf. English <the> from <this> or High German
<der, das, die> from <dieser, dieses, diese> etc.).
Though the change of <i> in Italian <il> to <e> in Spanish
<el> may reflect some Moorish influence.
By the way, the idea itself to put an article before all nouns
may penetrate late Latin just from the Gothic, Langobardic
or other Germanic languages.

Vladimir


-----Original Message-----
From: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com [mailto:gothic-l at yahoogroups.com]On
Behalf Of Peter Gutierrez
Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2005 9:42 AM
To: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [gothic-l] the word "the" as in "the house" or "the car"


Hi fellow lovers of the written language,

Does anybody know what the visigoths might have used
for the word "the."   Spain uses an arabic word for
"the" which is the word "EL."  What the [edit] did the
visigoths used prior to the moorish invasions?  I
imagine that they used something from their old gothic
language. Perhaps something akin to ostrogothic or
even something before they split up to become the east
and west goths.

Peter

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